Current communication traffic management schemes which are applied to communication traffic typically have a centralized queuing point, in an egress data path in communication equipment for instance, from which traffic is scheduled. This results in several fundamental problems.
Cost is one disadvantage of current traffic management schemes. A designer must generally determine the “scale” of traffic management requirements ahead of time and pay for this up front, to implement a depth of memory sufficient to support the determined traffic management requirements. A significant negative impact of this cost is that many potential entrants into the communications industry, especially relatively small businesses, are not able to satisfy the cost of entry market demands of a new product while still being able to meet traffic management requirements.
Flexibility is another traffic management challenge. Traffic management is normally scaled to fit unique customer applications by implementing a certain number of queuing entities, depth of memory, number of virtual output ports, etc. Traffic management capabilities cannot be expanded to meet growing needs or requirements once communication equipment is deployed.
There remains a need for improved communication traffic management systems and methods.